gfp

I'm not going to stop freaking out until Jay Powell gets this under control

nibble nibble nibble - looking forward to my fifteen dollars!

Blake, you give the Federal Reserve too much credit for powers it doesn't have. You should instead focus on money creation through Federal deficits and the creation of new bank money. Also, money has to be circulating and not scared and stagnant or sequestered in order to really matter in your equation. The other side of your equation is supply of goods and services, which were recently disrupted simultaneously with large fiscal stimulus. The primary tools the Federal Reserve has are 1.) signaling (psychology, expectations, etc - this is why they are so obsessed with maintaining their "credibility") and 2.) indirectly influencing the demand for new loans, which create new bank money. They also serve to backstop large systemic institutions from failing or dominos cascading but that isn't their primary role. QE and QT are useless and the Fed is aware of it. The Fed doesn't really play much of a role at all in creating new "money" except to the extent that they control the price of non termed out commercial loans and after 5 years or so that starts to really have an impact as refinancing comes along. Usually long enough for another "crisis" to come along and rates to start marching down again. We'll see if this time is different. We are approaching another of these refinancing walls in 2025

"The interest rate the Federal Reserve sets doesn't effect inflation the way you are assuming it does" - gfp

I have had a bunch of limit buy orders for Chubb down here around $250/share and the first one just executed at $253.07. With all the LA wildfire headlines I wouldn't be surprised to see all of them executed.

thanks Maverick47! Also explains all these line items on my Louisiana insurance policies that are tacked on "2005 Louisiana FAIR plan emergency assessment" ... That was 20 years ago and I'm still paying several hundred

Not sure where to post this but I found it entertaining and it is a well told narrative of an early 80's Berkshire Hathaway arbitrage investment. Didn't want to put it in 'Buffett's early investments' since that is somebody else's book. This is a free article but the substack offers a subscription. Not a recommendation to pay up for a sub. https://dirtcheapstocks.substack.com/p/how-warren-buffett-earned-a-39-irr?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2329765&post_id=154492215&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=oqhe5&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Sounds like the state of California FAIR Plan insurance outfit is going to get a large chunk of it. I wonder who sells reinsurance to that entity?

Look at Eurobank breaking out! I hadn't noticed until your post

There will always be a record debt level. Every year. We call those liabilities "money." QE doesn't do anything but create excess bank reserves that aren't useful in the real economy and don't circulate. The coupon securities the government takes form the private sector when they "do QE" are more useful to the private sector - they can be pledged as collateral, transformed into anything, etc. When you think about excess "money" in the system it is not QE, it is deficit spending and sometimes a boom in bank lending (not currently). Deficit spending and growth in bank lending is the only way new federal money gets into our system. International money can be created by non-US banks in huge amounts. There are a lot of moving parts. QE is not a major factor in any of it.

Just be careful being so sure you have a handle on all this. You are young and it can all seem so obvious. It isn't. Being defensive is just fine. Being sure is usually a mistake. If you stick to ground level blocking and tackling in individual companies compounding your net worth you don't have to be sure about Congress being "soon forced to reform entitlement spending" - whatever you think that means.

It is probably something like this: " We continue to encourage all our employees to be owners of our company through our employee share ownership plan, under which our employees’ share purchases by way of payroll deduction are supplemented by contributions by their employer."

I don't know but we just had to turn down a prospective tenant who applied but couldn't afford the apartment and I was sort of worried he would come back with some discrimination stuff. Dude put his Mother down as his only reference LOL... My first thought was to forward him this article and explain how irresponsible it is for a landlord to trap a tenant in a contract that can't afford but luckily that is my wife's department and I fix the toilets where my strengths lie.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-regulator-sues-berkshire-unit-140627825.html

Charlie mentioned two barrons-sourced investments. The one that he exited with $80m to give to Li Lu was Tenneco and the one at age 99 was the one that he saw double before his death and his heirs still hold.

Yeah, we started construction / development after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans because there was so much opportunity in historic housing stock. Those were the days. Once bought an 1850 square foot double for $25k - wife talked them down from $40k ask. Haven't bought any real estate since 2020 but retained some multifamily historic tax credit rentals that do their thing on the first of the month like clockwork.

44 years old, investor, looks like I was 30 when I joined this board. Was on some early message boards with dealraker and a few other old timers back to around 2002 or so. Investing since the year 2000 when I stopped going to college and used the rest of the college money to start.

A new spin on underperformance! It will be interesting when the 5 and 10 year records underperforming are spun as a good thing

That’s right - Panic!!

I don't think I will ever understand why you focus on an arbitrary price per share of the bitcoin ETFs - they can split and it is a meaningless number.

You've got Tim Eriksen over at Solitron - he's a "value investor" if that's still a thing. SODI

Yes - year-end marks are important for hedge fund managers in any year and even more so when they are going to be actively marketing their track record to IPO the management company. But even in a regular year their performance reallocation usually crystalizes on the year end mark.

Some more VRSN purchases. A few tip offs that it's not Warren himself are that much of the stock is held in the various pension funds, which was the first capital he turned over to Todd and, later, Ted. Also these trade sizes are not Warren's style at all. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000095017024141263/xslF345X03/ownership.xml

Some companies cancel the stock, some don't. Apple cancels it. Berkshire holds all the shares they have repurchased as treasury stock. They could easily use it as merger consideration in the future if they desired. The treasury stock is not outstanding and doesn't get voted by management. The other variation is the GAAP "treasury stock" at Biglari Holdings, where the company indirectly owns several hundred million dollars of its own shares through an LP investment, where management does vote the shares but they are eliminated from the GAAP financial statements as look-through treasury stock. This unusual arrangement causes many market participants to incorrectly compare the market cap using one share count to the published balance sheet. If you leave the balance sheet entry for Treasury stock (at cost) it can provide an easy to judge record of accumulated share repurchases over the years. If repurchases flip shareholders equity negative it can make the relationship more apparent at a glance. Apple, for instance, will likely flip to negative shareholders equity some time in the next few years. They publish a separate document that shows what Berkshire's 'Treasury stock, at cost' line item conveys - https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_earnings/2024/q4/generic/Q4-24-Return-of-Capital-Timeline.pdf

I don't subscribe to their service but I did follow dirt cheap on twitter. Value investing can definitely be exciting when you find something great and nobody else is buying it and the more work you do the more sure you get that you are going to make a lot of money. The money is made in the buying in this game and that's the exciting part for me. Selling doesn't do it for me, even though that's when you crystalize the profit.